Attorneys for victims in 2005 Glendale train crash fault engineer

A 2005 Metrolink train crash that killed 11 and injured 177 could have been avoided if the engineer had followed proper emergency procedures, according to attorneys representing victims of the accident.

The crash -- the second deadliest in Metrolink history after September’s Chatsworth catastrophe -- happened in the Glendale area after the train slammed into a sport utility vehicle that had been left on the tracks.

The engineer noticed the reflection of the vehicle when he was about three-quarters of a mile away, but he waited until he was 800 feet from the point of impact before applying the emergency brakes, according to the attorneys. The commuter train slammed into the SUV, derailed, struck a parked freight train and then collided with an oncoming Metrolink train.

“He was duty-bound under the rules of Metrolink to put his train in emergency” braking when he saw the vehicle, Los Angeles attorney Jerome Ringler told reporters Thursday at a news conference. “Had he done so, there would have been no derailment.”

Ringler and Los Angeles attorney Brian Panish said their accusation is corroborated by data from the train’s event recorder box, which monitors train speed and other key actions such as braking and stopping.

“The black box data is irrefutable,” Panish said.

The attorneys, who have filed a negligence lawsuit against Metrolink on behalf of a dozen victims, said they uncovered their information last month during a deposition of the train engineer. They described the engineer as a veteran train operator who had made hundreds of trips along the route where the accident occurred.

A spokesman for Metrolink, citing the pending civil case, said the agency had no comment on the allegations. The case is scheduled to be heard in June in Superior Court.

The driver of the sport utility vehicle, Juan Manuel Alvarez, was convicted of murder and sentenced in August to 11 consecutive life terms. Prosecutors argued that Alvarez had intended to kill passengers in a twisted effort to gain attention from his estranged wife.

The engineer, according to the attorneys, had ample time to stop the train before it hit Alvarez’s vehicle. “For 11 to 22 seconds, he did absolutely nothing,” Ringler said.

The engineer first applied his regular brakes, then followed up with the emergency brakes, according to the attorneys.

Panish faulted Metrolink for failing to take adequate safety precautions to reduce the potential for human error, which he said caused the Glendale-area crash and the Chatsworth collision that killed 25 people and injured 135. The attorneys are also representing about a dozen Chatsworth victims.

In the Chatsworth accident, the engineer sent and received 57 text messages while on duty the day of the crash, according to preliminary data from federal safety investigators. The last message was sent from the engineer’s cellphone just 22 seconds before he slammed into an oncoming freight train on a single line of shared track.

A multiagency probe of that accident, led by the National Transportation Safety Board, is expected to take months to complete.

At least six lawsuits have been filed in connection with the Chatsworth collision.

Attorneys familiar with previous railroad accident settlements have said the damage claims in that crash are expected to exceed a $200-million cap that Congress imposed a decade ago to limit a railroad’s liability in any single accident.

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robert.lopez@latimes.com